The last surviving Mammoth

Did you know that the largest building in Croatia is also one of the largest apartment blocks in Europe? It’s called Mamutica, which means female mammoth, and is located in Travno, the eastern part of New Zagreb.

Firstly, around 1975, the architect ?uro Mirkovi? decided to call this huge giant building Tratin?ica, which stands for the flower daisy, but the name didn’t last long since tenants called it the Mammoth for its enormous size.

It is 240 meters long with the height of 60 meters. The building has 19 floors and each one of them counts more than a 120 flats. There are more than five thousand people living here.

“If you need to buy anything you don’t really need to go to town or anywhere else, you just go down the stairs, exit the building and everything is right in front of you”, says Lukša, who has been living in Mamutica for almost 20 years.

Since the building is the largest in volume in Zagreb, no wonder tenants do not have to leave the building. They have almost everything they need inside the building.

“My six year old daughter inside of one building goes on the instructions of physics on one floor and guitar on the other”, says Silvija, another resident of Mammoth, who has been living here since she was seven.

Despite the popularity, this building is crying for its reconstruction, but it would be an extremely expensive project.

“Well, perhaps the building doesn’t look as nice as it could be, but what could you do, it was built during the socialism so you can feel that vibe”, adds Lukša.

Maybe a report made by Ditte Ilbrink, Júlia Bettuz, Karla Junicic and Adam Tesarski will help the symbol of New Zagreb to raise money for its reconstruction. While waiting for this to happen, we can only look at the MoJo of how the story has been made.